Have A Nice Day
I’ve just published Have A Nice Day as part of The Human In The Machine, a series about productivity. Excerpted below, but check out the whole piece here.
I interviewed a young couple who were both working in corporate sales (for different companies) out of their shared home office. The goal of this research project was to understand how people worked, outside of traditional offices. I had my own assumptions about what we’d learn, expecting stories about people folding laundry while they were on the call with a colleague (In fact, we met one woman who described being on a web-based teleconference from her laptop while she drove her child to after-school activities). But this couple had a particular approach: they went into the home office at 9 am and focused only on their work, until 5 pm (with a break for lunch). They deliberately maintained a firewall between their work environment (and the associated tasks) and the rest of their lives. This took intentionality and focus.
In this interview, the husband explained to us that he begins every day by making a list of what he wants to accomplish. Beyond managing his productivity, having this list meant he could tell if he had a good day!